Min's Vampire (8 page)

Ha,
her
Luca! Maybe she was crazier than
she’d thought. Having the vampire come into her home, and then to
let him go after she’d had her way with him—now that was truly the
work of a lunatic. Maybe all the pressure that was on her
shoulders, suddenly being the head of the family, was too
much?

She’d been working so hard on learning
all she could from the books, and working nearly as hard at trying
not to think about Luca…no, the vampire! She had to stop thinking
of him as a person. She had to think of him as what he truly was, a
merciless, soulless killer. And then she read something in the
Lydian grimoire that had to have been written by a deranged person,
or at least a complete idiot.

It was a vague reference to the souls
of humans being restored by using—contorting—the soul of a vampire
to snag it from the ether.

She reread the passage, laughed—and the
sound of it filled her with dread. It was the laugh of a mad woman.
Vampires did not have souls, of this she was certain. She had
killed enough of them, and her family had splayed enough of them
over the last millennia, to know that as a fact.

She slammed the volume shut. Her
shoulders had gone tight, a spill of curse words on the tip of her
tongue. Her frustration was hot enough it felt like anger. And
after she gave the old book a throw against the wall of the
kitchen, that anger only doubled. She didn’t like it, but the anger
felt much better than the frustration. She should throw things more
often. What kind of idiot wrote such obvious fallacies? And what
publisher, even back in ancient times, would have printed such
garbage?

Well, she had only to look to the
rather small self-help section she’d grudgingly put up at the
store. Most of those authors didn’t know jack about human emotions
or the humans that had them. She considered the whole genre a cruel
cosmic joke. She wondered what, if anything, the authors with
alphabet soup behind their names had degrees in: applied greeting
card design, or more probable, creative writing.

Whichever it was, the fact that she’d
wasted an entire night studying an obviously fraudulent book made
her mad enough to scream. She wanted that long dead author there in
front of her so she could shove that book straight up his
ass!

She took in a great breath and let it
out slowly. She needed to get this out of her system. She had
another three books to start in on, and she needed to squeeze in
about a week’s worth of balancing the books. Andy was great with
the customers, and she kept the stocking and special orders flowing
like a well-oiled machine. She just couldn’t stand or sit still
long enough—and didn’t want to—to deal with long columns of ciphers
all in a row. That had always been Min’s job, even when her mother
had been there. Neither Andy nor Katarina had had the least bit of
interest in the business side of the shop.

Thankfully they both had the talent for
selling things. They just seemed to know exactly what a customer
couldn’t live without.

Min scowled at the store’s ledger,
lying innocently on the counter by her purse. She was so on edge
her hands were balled up in fists and she had the sudden desire to
throw the ledger across the room too. She needed some kind of
release.

Her inner voice didn’t even say
anything. It sounded more like a contented sigh, maybe a whimsical
hum. Whatever it was, Min knew exactly what it was suggesting.
There was a sexually insatiable vampire somewhere out there, and
she’d already set gris-gris at every possible entrance to the
house. That, added to the intricate and mightily effective wards
and protection spells she decked the house out in, would allow her
even more control over the vampire than she’d had the last
time.

But it’s so stupid…so
dangerous…you’re flirting with death…

She felt her shoulders tighten as her
inner voice argued with her more sensible side.

But you own that fiend.
You’ve already proven you can make him your sex toy. And what good
is a toy unless you play with it?

But you shouldn’t have a sex
toy that could kill you. Why would you want something like
that?

Min felt her shoulders relax as she
whispered, “But I do.”

That was when she decided it was time
to let the vampire in again. She needed the break, and the sex,
and…how pathetic was she…she actually missed the murderous fiend.
And though she hadn’t looked outside, not even once, all these
nights since she’d had him, she knew he’d been out there, waiting
for her. She could feel him.

She’d tried to block it out, but now
she simply opened herself up the slightest bit, and there he was,
waiting for her.

She shouldn’t do this. It was so
stupid. But she moved to the window, looked out, and there he was,
exactly where he’d been waiting for her that first
night.

Chapter 9

Again there was the feeling that Luca
had passed through an electrified spider web. There had even been a
small shock when he’d touched the doorknob as well. He knew
immediately that her spell was stronger than it had been before.
That by entering he would be giving up all control to
her.

He entered anyway.

She was waiting for him, her face blank
at first, then a little scared, but finally a smile bit through her
mask. She had beautiful dimples surrounding that scarlet, pouty
mouth. “Come in, vampire.”

Luca cringed at the word, at her
referring to him only as vampire. “You know my name. And since I
will have no free will at all while I’m here, at least have the
mercy to call me by it.”

She seemed to ponder that, and she
scowled at what she was thinking. Finally she said, “Fine. As you
wish.” She stood there, just staring.

Finally he tested his restraints. He
could walk, at least that much he could do without her telling him
explicitly what to do. He reached out to touch her face when he got
to her.

She looked up into his eyes. Her eyes
were so dark, so drowning deep. But there was a flicker of gold in
them, a flare of her power. “Same rules as last time,
vam—Luca.”

“
I cannot harm or kill you,”
he said breathlessly, moving all the closer, “but only try to
please you.”

She smiled. “Yes…do try.”

Min climbed the stairs leading to her
room. She felt cold, tingly, even though the house was more than
warm enough. Even though she wore only a thin, silken negligee, she
shouldn’t be shivering. About halfway up the stairs it hit her. She
was nervous…but nervous about what? If anything, her control over
him would be even better than it was the other night. She’d taken
her time with the ritual magicks, fashioned the gris-gris with care
that hung from every possible entrée to her home—even the old coal
chute that was quite too small for anyone, including a vampire, to
fit through. And she’d been working to bolster the home’s natural
and warded defenses. By inviting him into her home, and dropping
the whammy on him this way, she’d assured his powerlessness against
her.

So why was she so goddamn
nervous?

“
You can go ahead into the
bedroom,” she said to the vampire as she passed by her door. “I’ll
be there in a moment.”

She stepped into the
bathroom in the hall and closed the door behind her, putting her
weight against it. Her heart thumped hard in her chest. It was
crazy, yes, the entire thing, what she had done, what she was going
to do with this vampire, it was all thoroughly insane. To open her
body to a soulless, demonic murderer was against so many natural
laws, against her own up-until-then stubborn moral code. But there
she was, after a full week of concerted effort and planning, she
was about to take the vampire into her bed,
again
.

She felt a little lightheaded as she
paced around the confines of the room. It was large as bathrooms
went, but when your mind is racing, as are your feet, you need
room, and the bathroom just wasn’t cutting it.

She could still change her
mind, tell him to leave, revoke the invitation. Surely it really
was just that simple. But that wouldn’t make her any safer. No, if
she was going to do a one eighty on having him with her, then she
shouldn’t just let him go. She should kill him.
The sooner the better,
her rational
self advised. As he was, she could easily just order him to stand
still, not to move a muscle, as she staked him. Yes, that would be
the most efficient way to deal with him. And then she could go
right back to her life, to hunting for a cure for her mother, and
forget all about the lunacy of having an affair with a
vampire.

Her hands were shaking when she turned
on the cold water, letting it flow over her wrists, trying to quell
the hellish heat that flashed under her skin, the heat that
alternated with the stinging cold of her fear. And that was what
she was, wasn’t she? She was afraid—afraid that the vampire would
turn the tables on her and make her his slave, or kill her. Afraid
his evil would infect her soul. Afraid of what her mother and
sister would think if they ever found out.

Yes, the cold in her stomach and the
sudden heat in her face told her that she was ashamed of what she
was doing. But damn it, it was her life, this existence, and she
would live it on her own terms.

Even if she couldn’t forgive herself
for doing so later.

The hinges of the bathroom door
squealed slightly as the vampire came into the bath, his green eyes
flashing with hunger, his skin so luminously white, lips parted and
full, begging to be kissed.

“
What’s wrong?” he asked, as
he moved closer.

She wanted to tell him to go away, to
order him to leave, but she couldn’t. She wanted him close to her.
That’s why she hadn’t made it an order when she’d told him to go
into her room. That was why she wouldn’t tell him what to and what
not to do. Deep down she wanted him to take her, to do what his
carnal instincts told him to.

And as long as he couldn’t hurt or kill
her, her plan would work out.

The best laid
plans
. Min sighed.

She was trying frantically to pull
herself together when he touched her, just the barest of caresses,
his fingers tracing over her shoulders, and then down her arms. She
felt the heat of her want overtake the cold shudders of her fear
and shame. Just that one touch had brought her to a full blaze of
yearning need, need for the vampire…for Luca.

Damned if she couldn’t keep it straight
in her mind. He was a freaking vampire, no matter how much she
wanted him, he was not human! Thinking of him by his name,
familiarizing him by using it, was just stupid—maybe lethally
so.

No, not like this. She couldn’t let him
take her when she needed him this much. Rational or not, it felt
like this time, as she was, she would have no protection against
him. Even though she had far more protections this time, she knew,
deep down, that she wouldn’t use them. She would let him have her.
Anything and everything, short of killing her.

Last time she’d been in
complete control, and though it had been exactly what she’d needed,
and it had been
nearly
the best sex she’d ever had in her life, it had been so
controlled it had been close to masturbation.

Her mind flickered on a
memory, the memory of
him—
the man who held the number one
spot in that department, and still held a place in her
heart—Günter.

The memory practically sizzled with how
wild and uncontrolled it had been, under a crescent moon, against
the trunk of a great, white, oak tree, in the middle of the forest.
He’d smelled of earth and pine, the musk of wolf. And he’d brought
her to ecstasy so many times that night, using his power, his
preternaturally strong body—smooth and muscular, every inch of him
hard as iron.

But he’d torn her heart, her very life,
apart when he’d left. For The Hunt was more important. It was his
life, his true love. And it had taken years for just the thought of
him not to reopen those old wounds. The thought of him and what
she’d gone through after he’d left still tore at her. But it was a
pain she could bear.

She had told herself she never wanted
to feel that way again. She’d vowed she would never let another man
into her heart again. That was why she’d…the mere act of
remembering what she’d done to herself, and with magick,
crystallized the blood in her veins, freezing her to the
bone.

The spell she’d cast that night, when
she could take the pain of his leaving no longer, seemed like such
a simple thing: warding her heart from new love. Like the wards on
the house, it was a simple thing to do. But she had never tried
such a thing, and it was so very dangerous. She’d kept her plans
hidden from her mother and sister, and yet her mother knew the
moment she’d seen her again, that she’d constructed a wall of
magick around her heart. And that it would never let a new love in
again.

That spell had lasted a good many
years. She’d been able to ignore every single man who showed the
least bit of interest, only now and then taking a man into her bed,
and only for the sex. But now, it seemed, her wall of love stopping
magick might be crumbling. The vampire’s hands held her arms firmly
now, and though he was no warmer than room temperature, she felt
heat building under her flesh where he held her.